[jammies]

Are we discussing the regressive left again for the nth time?

More importantly, all this talk of the USA being a democracy is so much blather and nonsense. The USA is a republic. It was specifically designed for the three branches of government to be somewhat disconnected from the common voter and his common, churlish ways.

The Senate was designed (as someone has mentioned) to, among other things, keep the slave states and free states in balance. (The proximate cause of the Civil War was the admission of Kansas as a free state and the election of Lincoln, who was against the recently passed Kansas-Nebraska act by which the South expected to extend slavery westward). Further, despite the fact it is the, by far, less democratic institution than the House of Representatives, it has the greater power in Congress.

The President is chosen by the electoral college, which is, again, not particularly democratic. The logic behind that college was to prevent the rule of the unwashed, not to promote democracy; the will of the people was to be moderated by the elites, not vice versa.

Lastly, the Supreme Court is filled with judges nominated by the President and approved by Congress. So two partly-democratic institutions populate a third, completely undemocratic institution.

Therefore, when people protest the outcome of this (or any election), rather than berating them for being sore losers, it might be more profitable to muse over whether or not the system they vote in actually does deny the power of their votes. Which it does. However, I suppose as long as you can vote for your local sheriff or dog-catcher, and for the senator that lets the most crumbs fall down to you from the government table, all's well. Get back to your iPads and lattes, you ungrateful wretches!